By W Goodwin

Reza is driving. Ever since we entered Turkey he won’t let me drive, even when he’s dead tired, because “Women shouldn’t drive in Muslim countries.” No arguing with him, so I’m in the front passenger’s seat, half-awake, my thoughts rambling…

I’m fine with Reza and his religion, but these old-world Muslims we’ve been meeting seem to get confused when they confront a confident woman (me!). Their reactions are clearly affecting Reza and the further east we go, the more ‘old world’ he’s getting. It’s really starting to bug me…

So here we are in eastern Turkey. This kind of road – they call it macadam here – has its own sound. I always picture roads to be the nerves of a continent, but this one looks more like a rib curving off into the distance. Rib or nerve, this road certainly has its own sad music, and the hum of the tires on the stippled surface lulls me. Maybe I’m even hypnotized. I can see it is higher than the surrounding desert, and in my present state, I’m certain this is because it’s built on top of older roads. We’re driving on top of an almost geological stratification of roads. Beneath us is a stack of fossil roads built by ancient civilizations. The bottom one was probably traveled by Alexander’s armies.

I close my eyes and think about the old people we’ve seen in the towns and villages we’ve passed through. They’ve lived through so many summers and winters and wars. I recall a disabled man, a beggar perhaps, sitting outside a souk. He was in the shade, staring and motionless on a camel-hide cushion. We were stopped in traffic for a moment, and I was able to see his face bore the scars of smallpox, and heartbreak, too. He was holding an unlit match between two dark finger tips. The match, I assumed, would eventually be struck and applied to the contents of the clay bowl atop the water pipe at his feet. Behind him a wooden crutch leaned against the wall. Sweat stained its leather pad…

I open my eyes and see three shepherds squatting on their heels, their herd of fat-tailed sheep foraging around them. Except for the slow turning of heads as they watch us pass, the sheep and their shepherds are motionless. Maybe they too are pondering the nature of the highway – rib or nerve? I suspect shepherds think a lot as they tend their flocks. Aren’t they the ones who invented astronomy? Maybe a religion or two?

Back in western Turkey, people had gentleness in their eyes. They smiled and waved to us. Even the ancient structures we passed seemed welcoming. “Come, camp here amongst our columns and crumbling ruins, feel what our lives were like, walk with our ghosts.” It seemed we shared something with Odysseus sailing along the shores of long-gone civilizations, Alexander cantering toward lands ripe for conquering, and cranes navigating entire continents.

Now we are hundreds of kilometers from Janus-faced Istanbul, beyond the history-heavy shores of the Black Sea and past the Ataturk monuments of Ankara. We are crossing the vastness of eastern Anatolia. Here are desiccated steppes interspersed with stark escarpments where the people have less gentle eyes and less welcoming gestures. In the land where the biblical ark may or may not have landed after the flood, a wind comes that carries away my happiness.

Here’s a fact for you. Eastern Turkey is populated with evil little red-eyed bastards who live along the highway in depressing mudbrick villages. We are approaching the first dun-colored buildings of one of those graceless places when a group of boys appear. We’ve learned to accelerate as they bend to pick up stones and we’re past before they start throwing.

The forlornness of that bleak land seeps into me and attacks my soul like a rat. I long for some sign of solace or peace. Then on the far side of one of those dismal villages, my gaze finds a small river. It is the first flowing water we have seen in this bereft landscape and I devour every glimpse of its cooling presence.

I open our much refolded map and find the river. I trace its countless curves with my finger. I discover it joins the Euphrates far to the south and knowing that meandering water is destined to merge with the river of Babylon and Ur, my despair begins to fade.

With a sense of the ancient world soothing and steadying me, I close my eyes again.

About the Author

Bound by blood to the ocean and directed by mixed genetics, W Goodwin wanders paths of macadam or sand looking for the intersection of Eclectic and Esoteric. A writer, photographer, parent, teacher and sailor, the author graduated from UCLA (biology and English) and completed the coursework for a Ph.D. The author has visited or lived in over 50 countries and written five non-fiction books, numerous blogs and countless articles and stories, and is presently completing a novel. The author’s short-form work has appeared or will soon appear in: The Dear Mule Review, 805 Lit+Art, Sunlight Press.